Blood Novels: Gender, Caste, and Race in Spanish Realism by Julia H Chang (review)

Reviewed by: Blood Novels: Gender, Caste, and Race in Spanish Realism by Julia H Chang Joan Hoffman Chang, Julia H Blood Novels: Gender, Caste, and Race in Spanish Realism. U of Toronto P, 2022. Pp. 207. ISBN 978-1-4875-4301-3. In Blood Novels: Gender, Caste, and Race in Spanish Realism, Julia H. Chang offers an innovative first-of-its-kind investigation of nineteenth-century male novelists' fascination with and anxiety about blood and its intersection with race, class, and gender. This "culturally situated analysis of blood—at once material and discursive—" considers the female protagonists of four of the most important male-authored works of Spanish realism: Doña Luz by Juan Valera, La Regenta by Leopoldo End Page 163 Alas, and La desheredada and Fortunata y Jacinta: Dos historias de casadas by Benito Pérez Galdós in an investigation that is at once both broad and deep (xi). Thus, Chang examines the myriad manifestations of blood—both physical and figurative—in these novels: bleeding bodies and blood-filled hallucinations; bloodlines—both human and equine; kinship, limpieza de sangre and converso surnames; menstruation and childbirth; leeches, bloodletting, and hemorrhage; 'bad blood,' 'blue blood' and birthright; la voz de la sangre and the pueblo's sangre social; bloodcolored buildings; freshly butchered meat, and blood-spattered poultry shops. The author successfully engages with feminism; queer studies; fashion and color; hygiene, gynecology, pathology, psychology, and historical medical texts; race theory, whiteness; the image of the horse; cleanliness and filth; the linguistic connections apparent in the words casta/castidad and lujo/lujuria; crowd science; history, politics, La Gloriosa, and the Paris Commune; Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, José Ortega y Gasset, Eduardo López Bago, and others "to view these iconic female protagonists anew" through the novel lens of blood (3). "Anew," is not a trivial word in this wholly original study. Indeed, this volume is brimming with new insights and overlooked connections in these widely studied works. To her credit, the author herself recognizes and repeatedly calls attention to her own pioneering approach with such phrases as "a critical dimension … that had long been ignored" (x), "that had not been seriously assessed before" (x), "In a seldom remarked passage of the novel" (72), "less critical space has been afforded to" (94), "far less attention has been given to" (132), "I propose a different reading" (138), and "that (to my knowledge) have never been examined in the criticism" (150). Noteworthy among Chang's novel contributions to our understanding of these authors, works, and female protagonists is her coining of the term "chastity bind" (66). Used here in reference to Ana Ozores, it is defined as the societal compulsion that she remains chaste because she is female, while at the same time being considered impure and unclean because she bleeds every month; indeed, many literary women could be characterized accordingly, and I can imagine this will not be the last time this term is used in literary or cultural criticism. Also unique is Chang's reading of the Fortunata-Jacinta relationship as a case of "queering kinship," in which both women (one red-blooded and one blue-blooded) become the parents of Fortunata's son (128) as Juanito is dismissed as the child's father, and both the heteronormative patriarchal kinship model and the limpieza de sangre model are toppled (130). I do not believe this much-studied scene has been understood in quite this way until now. Truly, through close reading, astute analysis, and use of wide-ranging sources, Julia H. Chang has succeeded, with Blood Novels: Gender, Caste, and Race in Spanish Realism, in obliging us to view four much-loved and much-studied nineteenth-century novels anew, to notice their authors' obsession with gender, caste, race, and blood in all of its manifestations. This is an important contribution to Spanish literary, cultural, and gender studies that will surely influence future research. Joan Hoffman Western Washington University Copyright © 2024 AATSP